Making the Most of Wikis

This is an apt descriptor since changes can be made immediately by editors. On this page we explain how this all works for those interested in editing wikis with confidence.

Change the world.

Frequently asked questions

Why wiki? Working together we can put information where others can more easily access it, edit it and improve it. Planeta Wiki editors contribute wherever and whenever they see fit.

What's the difference between a wiki and a blog? A blog is written is chronological order like a journal. On a wiki, members can edit or create any page.

Please note that wikis require active participation, top-down and bottom-up buy-in, commitment from multiple parties and frequently face-to-face training. If that's not a possibility, arranging a video conversation with screenshare is the next best thing.

Are there are ways to edit? Yes, we are also fans of using Google Docs for collaborative editing.

Tip

Join or host an edit-a-thon. Digital literacy training includes many hands on training sessions. If you know enough, you can host your own event and show others how to contribute to this wiki and to Wikipedia.

Planeta.com

Essay: The Value of Wikis
Paraphrasing Benjamin Disraeli: "The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to wiki about it."

Think of wikis as collaborative murals. Artists come together and prepare something in a public space.

Please note that there's more than one 'wiki' as certainly as there are more than one wall.

Think of wikis as the yellow pages. Listings include phone numbers and addresses plus the social web channels.

A wiki is invariably incomplete. It needs the feedback and participation from readers to make corrections and expand the coverage.

As a tool the wiki has reached the point in which a critical mass of web-savvy and content-savvy people have joined forces. We are particularly attracted to the idea since Planeta.com has matured with reader feedback and there's no better public editing tool than a wiki! By using this software, we are able to work with long-time contacts in developing and improving features without the tedious exchange of documents via email.

"The objective is to have accurate information and to share meaningful information in a relevant - and sometimes slow - conversation," said Ron. "The process of suggesting edits, new links and developing projects of mutual interest is much easier using a wiki than the traditional cycle of exchanging emails or worse documents. This is an exciting time to develop collaborative work which can also be fun!"

Ron: "Wikipedia is not the only wiki model out there and I would heartily recommend the wike-style editing to academics and journalists alike. We can create informative materials within websites accessible to the public and edited by trusted colleagues. One of the advantages of wiki-style editing is that we show our work with each change being notated. Frankly, when I look at 'dead tree' versions of journals and books, I am disappointed we cannot se the makings of the monster."

Live Feed

Quotes

The word wiki is from a Hawaiian in fact. And so Wikipedia literally means 'quick education'. But it came about because the guy who came up with all the wiki websites (wiki is a class of website, Wikipedia is just one of them) was back in the '90s in Hawaii at an airport, and he saw that the bus was called the Wiki Wiki Bus, the quick bus, and he was looking for a word that sounded and felt quick to go with this very new kind of website that he wanted to come up with for programmers to share and edit information. And he decided to call his first website Wiki Wiki Web. And that's a silly little story, but the moment I tell that it goes from being a kind of made up word without places or faces behind it to being a specific story about one man who is still alive, who we can ask questions, doing very particular things in the late 1990s, and that's where this particular tool came from, that's how it was born. And that's why we have this…we're all speaking a little bit of Hawaiian without even knowing it.
- Tom Chatfield, A linguistic celebration of the digital world

Traffic and Transparency

Among the advantages of a wiki are complete histories of each page and usage statistics.

Traffic increased from an average of less than 50 unique visitors a day in January 2008 to about 200 unique daily visitors in July 2008 and 400 unique visitors in July 2009. In contrast, the Planeta website receives about 2,000 unique visitors a day.

Social Web

The philosophy behind Wiki is that text is fluid and can be edited, illustrated in the popular video The Machine is Us/ing Us The process is collaborative, following the logic that 'two heads are better than one' or the more the merrier!' The best pages on this or any wiki will be edited numerous times and preferably by more than one person. Click 'history' on any wiki page to review the editorial process.

The process has been fun and reflects natural world partnerships that are friendly and informal. There's no better evidence of this than the guides to the English language co-written and edited with friends who are sharing their expertise.

Collaboration

Way-new collaboration - Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.

knowledge: this is where we and you can store and create discussion papers, reports, research and other documents.

We have loaded a list of the top issues into the knowledge gallery and the first discussion paper. The Post Settlement Heritage Discussion Paper details the historic themes supported by the parks and finishes with a discussion point.

Wikis are wonderful, but require hands-on training for partners who are usually all over the learning curve. "I've promoted more transparent, more interactive tourism websites for years, but it's often been the less web-savvy managers/directors keeping their own staffs in the doldrums when it comes to using today's off-the-shelf technologies," Ron said. That said, I think we've already reached a tipping point leading us to use these great tools. Point in case is the Good Tourism Wiki -- http://www.good-tourism.com -- with its own history documented in Sustainable Tourism: A Wiki to the Wise.

Parks Victoria’s vision is to maintain an outstanding park and waterway system, which is protected and enhanced for people, for ever. These parks are reserved to protect their important natural values and the wePlan Alpine project is your chance to contribute to fulfilling that vision. By having your say, you are adding to the environmental, social and economic wellbeing of Victorians.http://weplan.parks.vic.gov.au/participate

Journalism

Wikipedia asks participants to submit only materials that they wrote or that they copied from the public domain, warning that copyrighted work should not be submitted without permission.

Many professional reporters and editors are hesitant to contribute to Wiki for the simple reason that they are not paid. Could the next step of Wiki-based reporting include paid contributions or rewards for the best contributions?

Educators and Wiki

Item. A professor teaches his students how to use Dreamweaver until he is told by tech support, 'Stop that. Teach them wiki.'